Baltic Dry Index falls to 317, down 8 points

Baltic Dry Index is compiled by the London-based Baltic Exchange and covers prices for transported cargo such as coal, grain and iron ore. The index is based on a daily survey of agents all over the world. Baltic Dry hit a temporary peak on May 20, 2008, when the index hit 11,793. The lowest level ever reached was on Friday, January 29 2016, when the index dropped to 317 points.

“I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the Synagogue of Satan.”

—

(Revelation 2:9)

“And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land...”

—

(Genesis 12:7)

Who should possess the land of Israel? Christian evangelicals say it should be the descendants of Abraham. They point to the Old Testament and claim that God gave this land forever to the descendants of Abraham and that God demands they and they alone own the land.To the Christian evangelical, this means the Jews. Yes, it is the Jews who own this land, and it is their land forever.

In 2008, Russian archaeologist Dmitry Vasilyev unearthed Itil, the long lost capital of the Kingdom of Khazaria. New DNA science proves that today’s “Jews” come from Khazaria and are not the seed of Abraham.

The Jews, then, according to Christian evangelicals, are the descendants of Abraham, his seed.

DNA Science Confounds the Common Wisdom

There is only one problem. And it is a huge one. Science proves those who call themselves “Jews” are not Jews! DNA Science has confounded the Christian evangelicals by proving conclusively that most of the people in the nation of Israel and in World Jewry are not the descendants of Abraham.Those living today who profess to be “Jews” are not of the ancient Israelites, and they are not the seed of Abraham. In fact, the new DNA research shows that the Palestinians actually have more Israelite blood than do the “Jews!”The nation of Israel today is populated with seven and half million imposters.

The “Jews” Are Not Jews But Are Khazarians

Dr. Eran Elhaik, geneticist researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that today’s “Jews” originated from Khazaria and not Israel. They are not the seed of Abraham.

The newest DNA science finding is from Dr. Eran Elhaik (“a Jew”) and associates at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In research accepted December 5, 2012 and published by the Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution, it was found that the “Khazarian Hypothesis” is scientifically correct.What exactly is the “Khazarian Hypothesis?” Simply stated, it holds that the Jewry genome is a mosaic of ancestries which rise primarily out of the Khazars.Jews are Khazars, not Israelites.The “Jews” of America, Europe, and Israel are descendants not of Father Abraham but of King Bulan and the people of ancient Khazaria. Khazaria was an amalgam of Turkic clans who once lived in the Caucasus (Southern Russia) in the early centuries CE. These Turkic peoples were pagans who converted to Judaism in the eighth century. As converts, they called themselves “Jews,” but none of their blood comes from Israel.

Geneticists report that less than 2% of “Jews” living in Israel are actually Israelites.

Later, the “Jews” (Khazars) emigrated, settling in Russia, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. As “Jews,” the Khazars then left the European nations in 1948 and settled the fledgling, new nation of Israel.The people of Israel are not the seed, nor the ancestors, of Abraham. They call themselves “Jews,” but in fact, DNA science shows them to be Khazars. They say they are “Jew,” but they are not.“There are no blood or family connections among the Jews,” said Dr. Elhaik in an interview with Haaretz, Israel’s daily newspaper. “The various groups of Jews in the world today do not share a common genetic origin. Their genome is largely Khazar.”

The Khazarians, never in Israel, converted to Talmudic Judaism in the 8th Century.

God Did Not Give the Land to the Khazarians
Thus, when Prime Minister Netanyahu says, “God gave this land to our Israelite forefathers,” he is absolutely wrong. There are no Israelite forefathers of today’s “Jews.” When today’s “Jews” say they should possess the land because they are Israelites and are the seed of Abraham, they are mistaken.The “Jews” are in Israel for one reason and one reason only: Because the United States, in 1948, recognized the nation of “Israel” and has since funded and protected it. God’s Word has nothing to do with it.God’s Word, the Holy Bible, prophesied that in the last days imposters would erroneously and falsely claim to be “Jews.” These imposters would, the Bible told us, persecute their enemies and especially the Christians. But God would have his revenge:

“Behold, I will make them of the Synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; Behold I will make them to come and worship at thy feet and know that I have loved thee.” (Revelation 3:9)

Do the “Jews” (Khazars) not do exactly as our God prophesied? Do they not persecute the Palestinians and defile the land, claiming they are its original inhabitants? This, even though their proven ancestors, the Khazars, never set foot in the Middle East and are not the seed of Abraham?My thanks to Dr. Eran Elhaik of Johns Hopkins University and to his associates. You have performed a valuable service with your DNA research, both to Christianity and to world understanding. Elhaik’s research confirms earlier DNA studies, especially the work of Dr. Ariella Oppenheim of Hebrew University, who likewise found, in 2001, that the “Jews” came from the Khazars rather than the Israelites. Dr. Oppenheim even found that some of the Palestinians have the chromosomes proving they are “Cohen,” related to the ancient Israelites who worked in the Synagogue and Temple.

Where, and Who, Are the Seed of Abraham?

I ask my evangelical Christian friends: What will you do now? Will you heed what God said, in Revelation 2 and 3, about “them which say they are Jews and are not?” Will you accept modern DNA science as legitimate and valuable in proving the truth of God’s Word?Or will you, dear Christian friend, walk right on by, dismissing what both God and science have informed you?God said that the seed of Abraham would inherit the land. Therefore, we must—absolutely must—in light of the DNA evidence, ask ourselves: Where, and who are the seed of Abraham?We know that Netanyahu and the people who now inhabit Israel have no claim to the land. They are interlopers, false pretenders. But there is a true and legitimate Chosen People of God. In fact, the scriptures had it right all along. The answer is found in Galatians 3:29. Read it for yourself:

“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”

So, if you belong to Jesus our Lord, you are “Abraham’s seed,” regardless of your physical race. You are overcomers, and Revelation 21:7 promises, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” This is the great secret that every true Christian knows.God is not a racist. The Great Commission extends to every race and ethnicity. We who love Jesus are His Chosen People, and we have the promise first given to Abraham way back in Genesis.Know this, and you will forever be greatly blessed. And that, dear friends is the promise given Abraham and his seed.Source: http://www.texemarrs.com/042013/jews_not_descendants_of_abraham.htm#.VqrLmIoMn-0.facebook

13 February 1945: Approximately 500,000 German Refugees Burned Alive by Allied Forces in Dresden

The professional liars who act on behalf of the official historiography of the Federal Republic of Germany shamelessly reduce the death toll of the Dresden holocaust by several hundreds of thousands.
On the other hand, nobody disputes that more than 12.000 houses in the center of the city were reduced to dust during the hellish firestorm. In view of the fact that, in addition to the 600.000 inhabitants of Dresden, another 600.000 people (refugees from Breslau) had found shelter in the overcrowded city, one can safely assume that each of these 12.000 houses contained no fewer than 50 people.

But of these houses virtually nothing remained, and the people who had been dwelling in them were transformed into ashes due to a heat of 1600 degrees Celsius. The deniers of the German Holocaust brazenly claim that only 35.000 persons perished in Dresden. Considering that a superficies of 7 x 4 kilometers, to wit 28 square kilometers, was completely destroyed, this "politically correct” figure would imply that less than 1, 5 persons died on each thousand square meters! In February 2005 a commission of "serious” historians further reduced this figure, claiming that only 24.000 Germans had been killed in Dresden. But anybody familiar with the character of the political system of Germany knows that these "serious historians” are nothing but vulgar falsifiers of history who are paid for preventing the breakthrough of the truth with more and more bare-faced lies.

The figure of 35.000 dead only represents the small part of the victims who could be fully identified. Erhard Mundra, a member of the "Bautzen committee” (an association of former political prisoners in the GDR), wrote in the daily newspaper Die Welt (12.2. 1995, page 8): "According to the former general staff officer of the military district of Dresden and retired lieutenant colonel of the Bundeswehr, D Matthes, 35.000 victims were fully and another 50.000 partly identified, whereas further 168.000 could not be identified at all.” It goes without saying that the hapless children, women and old people whom the firestorm had transformed into a heap of ashes could not be identified either.

In 1955 former West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer stated: "On 13 February 1945, the attack on the city of Dresden, which was overcrowded with refugees, claimed about 250.000 victims.” (Deutschland heute, edited by the press and information service of the federal government, Wiesbaden 1955, page 154.)

In 1992, the city of Dresden gave the following answer to a citizen who had inquired about the death toll: "According to reliable information from the Dresden police, 202.040 dead, most of them women and children, were found until 20 March. Only about 30% of them could be identified. If we take into account those who are missing, a figure of 250.000 to 300.000 victims seems realistic.” (letter by Hitzscherlich, Sign: 0016/Mi, date: 31 - 7 - 1992.)

At the time of the attack, Dresden had no anti-aircraft guns and no military defense. It possessed no military industry at all. The city served as a shelter for refugees from the East. The roofs were marked with a red cross.The German cities became huge crematoria

In that horrible night from 13 to 14 February 1945, the biggest war criminal of all time, Winston Churchill, had almost 700.000 incendiary bombs dropped on Dresden – in other words, one bomb for two inhabitants. On 3 March 1995, Die Welt commented this fact:

When the cities became crematoria… Professor Dietmar Hosser from the institute for construction material, massive construction and fire prevention deems it highly probable that the temperatures above ground reached up to 1600 degrees Celsius.”The deadly "liberation” came from the skies

The genocide of the German nation destroyed "80% of all German cities with more than 100.000 inhabitants”. The air forces of the Allied war criminals dropped "40.000 tons of bombs in 1942, 120.000 tons in 1943, 650.000 tons in 1944 and another 500.000 tons in the four last months of the war in 1945” (Die Welt, 11 February 1995, page G1).The Germans did not begin the bombing war!

It should be reminded that Great Britain and France declared war on the German Reich on 3 September 1939, and that England began the terror bombing against the German civilian population as early as two days after its declaration of war. On 5 September 1939 the first raids took place against Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven; on 12 January 1940, Westerland/Sylt was bombed. Two weeks later, on 25 January, the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht forbade air raids against Britain, including her ports, an exception being made for the docks of Rosyth. On 20 March, Kiel and Hörnum/Sylt were attacked with 110 explosive and incendiary bombs, which hit and destroyed a hospital. In April 1940, British bombers attacked further towns devoid of military importance. On 11 May 1940, one day after being named Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, Winston Churchill decided to order a massive air offensive against the German civilian population; however he did not inform his own people of his decision. On 18 May 1940, the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht reported more meaningless British attacks on non-military aims and warned Britain of the consequences.

Not before 14/15 November 1940 did the Luftwaffe first attack a British city – Coventry with its important military industry. This happened several months after the start of the British terror bombing against civilian targets in Germany. The raid claimed about 600 victims.

Air-warfare expert Sönke Neitzel concludes: "Indisputably during the first years of the war all heavy attacks of the German Luftwaffe against cities were planned as military blows and cannot be defined as terror raids.” (Darmstädter Echo, 25 – 9 – 2004, p. 4)Historians: "The British and American peoples share the burden of guilt for the genocide of the Germans”

In September 1988, military historians from five countries met at a conference in Freiburg. The event had been organized by the Institute for Military Research of the Bundeswehr. During a week, American, British, German, French and Italian specialist discussed various aspects of air warfare in the Second World War. After the conference, the daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine published a detailed and highly interesting article. Under the headline

"Bombing the Cities”, the author, Professor Günter Gillessen, wrote: "It is a remarkable fact that the Wehrmacht stuck to the traditional principles of moderate warfare until the very end, whereas the two Western democracies resorted to a revolutionary, radical and reckless type of air warfare.” Another interesting conclusion the historians arrived at was the following: "It cannot be disputed that the principles of international law forbade total carpeting bombing … The historians considered the indiscriminate bombing as an abomination, but refused to lay the whole guilt on Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris or the Bomber Command. According to them, the entire staff of the RAF, but even more the political leaders, especially Churchill and Roosevelt, plus the majority of their peoples shared the burden of guilt.”Churchill wanted to roast German refugees

On 13 February 1990, forty-five years after the destruction of Dresden, British historian David Irving spoke at the Dresden "Kulturpalast". In his speech, Irving quoted the war criminal Winston Churchill: "I don't want any suggestions how to destroy militarily important targets around Dresden. I want suggestions how blasting the Germans in their retreat from Breslau." (Minute by A.P.S. of S. - Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman- Jan 26, 1945 in "Air Historical Branch file CMS.608") But for Churchill, roasting the Germans was not enough. On the morning after the firebombing, he ordered his "Tiefflieger" (strafers, low-flying planes) to machine-gun the survivors on the beaches of the river Elbe.

Churchill’s systematic war of extermination against the German people included plans for the destruction of every house in every German city. "’If it has to be, we hope to be able to destroy nearly every house in every German city.’… In March 1945 Churchill began to doubt the wisdom of bombing German cities ‘simply for the sake of increasing the terror’, but the terror continued.” (Die Welt, 11 February 2005, p. 27)The German elite accuses the victims

Whereas the butcher Churchill actually felt some belated remorse for his war of extermination against the civilian population of Germany, the despicable German post-war elite awarded him the Karlspreis (Charlemagne prize) of Aachen. Churchill accepted this prize in Aachen, one of the countless cities his air-force had devastated, thereby burning alive countless human beings.

Since then, the elite of the German vassal state has not changed. They continue to praise the murderers and to revile the victims. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of his city, the mayor of Dresden, Ingolf Rossberg, did not shrink from heaping abuse on the German holocaust victims; he practically justified the murder of hundreds of thousands (most of them women, children and wounded soldiers in the hospitals) plus the annihilation of irreplaceable cultural treasures: "60 years after the devastating bombing, which claimed tens of thousands of victims, mayor Ingolf Rossberg warned against misunderstanding Dresden as an ‘innocent city’.” (Die Welt, 12 February 2005, Internet version).

Thus spoke the mayor of a city which had received streams of people, animals and carriages like a caring mother. The streets and squares of Dresden were filled with refugees, the meadows and parks had been transformed into huge camps. When the fatal hour approached, about 1.130.000 people were living in Dresden. The result of the attacks was even more murderous than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Only the German victims are guilty, not their murderers!

As American, British, German, French and Italian historians ascertained at the Freiburg conference in 1988, not only the main war criminals Churchill and Roosevelt bear the guilt for history’s worst atrocity. The majority of the British and the American population were not blameless either.

The German weekly Der Spiegel stated in its 1/1995 issue: "About six million Germans were killed." As a matter of fact, the actual figure was about fifteen million. But although even the anti-German Spiegel admits that six million Germans were put to death, the German elite only bemoans Jewish victims.

On 12 February 1995, Ernst Cramer wrote in Die Welt (page 12): "When commemorating the victims, we should stop asking about guilt.” And what had the politically super-correct former German president, Roman Herzog, to say about who was guilty of the German genocide? Speaking in Dresden on 13 February 1995, Herzog chose to insult the victims by stating: "It is meaningless to discuss if the bombing war, the inhumanity of which nobody disputes, was legally justified or not. What are such discussions good for, considering that fifty years have elapsed?” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 February 1995, p. 1)

But when it comes to monstrously exaggerating the Auschwitz death toll (according to the well-known journalist Fritjof Meyer, three and a half million Auschwitz victims were simply invented in order to denigrate the German people) the professional hypocrites and liars never say: "It is meaningless to discuss this… What are such discussions good for, considering that so and so many years have elapsed?” As a matter of fact, all leading German politicians claim that Germany is guilty in all eternity. Even the unborn Germans are guilty!Two measures

Let us resume: Not even the responsibles deny that the German cities were transformed into crematoria during World War Two. The total amounts of bombs dropped on the German cities has been confirmed by the criminals themselves and is therefore credible. That six million Germans were killed, was confirmed by the anti-German Spiegel and by official statistics, although the real figure is about 15 million. Nevertheless every liar under the sun apparently has the right to affirm that the allied terror bombings claimed only a handful of victims. These brazen falsifiers of history have nothing to fear from the German justice.The biggest mass murder in history

The "democrats”, who claim to have "liberated” the German people from Hitler, brought nothing but terror and destruction. In Dresden, they murdered several hundreds of thousands people in one single hellish night and destroyed countless cultural treasures. Women who were giving birth to children in the delivery rooms of the burning hospitals jumped out of the windows, but within minutes, these mothers and their children, who were still hanging at the umbilical cords, were reduced to ashes too. Thousands of people whom the incendiary bombs had transformed into living torches jumped into the ponds, but phosphorus continues to burn even in the water. Even the animals from the zoo, elephants, lions and others, desperately headed for the water, together with the humans. But all of them, the new-born child, the mother, the old man, the wounded soldier and the innocent animal from the zoo and the stable, horribly perished in the name of "liberation".

Burned victims after the Dresden Massacre

This and similar pictures were often used after the war as photographic proof of Jewish gas victims.

Bombing in Europe was never a winning strategy, says Richard Overy in The Bombing War

‘I cannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’ said one woman who lived through the initial German raids on London during the second world war. This woman’s ambivalent reaction to having a bomb rip through her bedroom typified the shocking reality of a different type of war to any that had ever been fought before.

For as Richard Overy makes eminently clear in his extraordinary and far-reaching history of Europe’s bombing war, this was the first time civilians actually became a part of the front line. The cause of this was the advent of aerial bombardment, which, Overy says, exposed ‘the democratic nature of total war, which insisted that all citizens had a part to play.’

The idea that bombing could demoralise a population and cause a government crisis had been a topic of hot discussion during the interwar years. In a lengthy preamble Overy, who has written numerous histories of the second world war, focuses on Bulgaria as a microcosm of the issues which defined the wider ‘strategic’ bombing war in Europe:

The bombing of Bulgaria was Churchill’s idea, and he remained the driving force behind the argument that air raids would provide a quick and relatively cheap way of forcing the country to change sides.

Fine in theory, but in practice things worked rather differently. The ‘political dividend’ Churchill sought to achieve in the early months of 1944 was offset by a high level of civilian casualties ‘which undermined the prestige of both the United States and Britain in the eyes of the Bulgarian people’. Overy notes that while bombing contributed to the collapse of any pro-German consensus and strengthened the hand of opposition political parties it did not result in a change of government until September 1944 when the Soviets introduced an administration dominated by the Bulgarian communist party.
Martialling his facts with dexterity Overy argues that bombing in Europe was never a war-winning strategy and invariably caused more harm than good. In what is the first full narrative of the bombing war in Europe Overy’s scope is incredibly broad and well-researched, also highly readable. He tackles not only the wider conflict with Germany but little-known bombing wars in France and Italy, which in both cases resulted in civilian casualties the equal of the Blitz.

He has also had access to ‘two new sources’ from the former Soviet archives, which include German air force documents covering the Blitz and others which throw new light on Germany’s bombings of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad — an area which up until now has had very little coverage.

Overy traces the origins of the bombing war back to 10 May 1940, the same day that Germany began its attack on the West and Churchill replaced Chamberlain as British prime minister. ‘Chamberlain had always opposed the use of bombing against urban targets,’ writes Overy, ‘but Churchill had no conscientious or legal objections.’ Indeed, already as Minister of Munitions in 1917, Churchill had been in favour of an independent air force and a policy of long-range bombing against German industrial targets.

Up until Churchill’s appointment as prime minister both Germany and Britain had stuck to a pledge not to attack targets in each other’s cities where civilians were at risk. Overy dismisses the long-held belief ‘firmly rooted in the British public mind’ that Hitler initiated the trend for indiscriminate bombings. Instead, he says, the decision to take the gloves off was Churchill’s, ‘because of the crisis in the Battle of France, not because of German air raids [over Britain].’

Ethical restraints which had been imposed at the start of the war became slowly eroded as a result of Britain’s decision to initiate ‘unrestricted’ bombing of targets located in Germany’s urban areas. In a fascinating chapter entitled ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Overy suggests that Britain’s Bomber Command developed its tactics for concentrated ‘area bombing’ and the wide use of incendiary bombs by observing the destruction Germany wrought on London during the Blitz.

The RAF altered its strategy of focusing on precise targets when it saw how effectively the German air force attacked clusters of targets in industrial and commercial areas. However, Overy says that under Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris’s stewardship Bomber Command took things a grisly step further by deliberately targeting German workers to reduce industrial output.

For much of the war, combined British, Commonwealth and American forces lacked the necessary technology to develop the long-range heavy bombers they needed to launch attacks on Germany’s main industrial hubs. The bombing war only really escalated in 1943 when Harris finally felt ready to launch three major offensives: the Ruhr-Rhineland in late spring and summer, Hamburg in July and Berlin in the autumn.

It was the second of these, codenamed ‘Operation Gomorrah’, that resulted in the single largest loss of civilian life in one city throughout the European war. Some 37,000 people died and over 60 per cent of Hamburg’s houses and apartments were destroyed by a blaze of incendiary bombs. Overy cites a German doctor who says he had to estimate the number of dead by measuring the ash left on the floor.

It was only near the end of the war, and the bombing of Dresden which killed approximately 25,000 people in a few hours, that there was any kind of outcry against Allied strategy, which incidentally had failed in any way to stem Germany’s production of armaments (there was a three-fold increase between 1941 and 1944). Yet after the war the British Bombing Survey Unit’s assessment was positively damning and criticised almost ‘all phases of Bomber Command’s activities except the final phase against oil and communications targets [in Germany].’

Though he is never quick to judge Overy does not disagree with postwar interpretations which saw ‘the final flourish of bombing against a weakened enemy, with overwhelming force, as merely punitive, neither necessary, nor, as a result, morally justified’. Looking desperately among the historical rubble for a positive response to a campaign which saw roughly 50 per cent of bomber pilots lose their lives during airborne sorties, Overy, suggests that

bombing was at its most significant as a political gambit in the earlier part of the war when the British government used the RAF as a means to win support among the occupied populations and from the US by showing that Britain was capable of fighting back.

It is small consolation for what the esteemed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith described as ‘one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, miscalculation of the war.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

The cultural appropriation of books, music, art, cuisine and dress have been used by Zionists as a weapon against Palestinians

Stealing and appropriating the culture and history of indigenous peoples is a typical characteristic of all modern colonial-settler states, but usually accomplished once the indigenous people in question has been eliminated, dispossessed, or otherwise seemingly defeated therefore making it safe to do so. The colonial-settler state of “Israel,” established on the ruins of Palestine and through the expulsion of the majority of its indigenous population in 1948 and after, is no different.

The Israeli theft of all things Palestinian, however, does not simply come from misguided notions of nationalism or childish pride as is often argued by Western apologists, but is rather a conscious political policy of the state that seeks to erase Palestine from historical memory, particularly within Western discourse. Indeed, the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic homeland goes hand in hand with the theft of Palestinian land, homes, history, and culture. It is an essential part of the larger, long-term Zionist project of eradicating the Palestinian nation altogether, literally writing it out of history while simultaneously assuming its place.

This erasure has been correctly termed as memoricide by historian Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Nur Masalha, elaborating further, writes: “The founding myths of Israel have dictated the conceptual removal of Palestinians before, during and after their physical removal in 1948... The de-Arabisation of Palestine, the erasure of Palestinian history and the elimination of the Palestinian’s collective memory by the Israeli state are no less violent than the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and the destruction of historic Palestine: this elimination is central to the construction of a hegemonic collective Israeli-Zionist-Jewish identity in the State of Israel” (The Palestine Nakba, 89).

Thus, the theft of Palestine and its culture has two essential and interwoven components, the removal/erasure of Palestinians and a concurrent assumption of nativity or “birthright” in Anglo-European Zionist terms. Over the last six and a half decades, this brazen erasure and theft has been achieved mainly through two methods: brutal violence (that is, terrorism) and mass media propaganda.

Al Nakba: Physical Destruction/Physical Theft

Between 1947 and 1949, at least 800,000 Palestinians, comprising the majority of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine at that time, were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist militias made up of European and Russian colonists and aided by British imperialists. Major urban Palestinian centres from the Galilee in the north to the Naqab (renamed “Negev” by Zionists) in the south were emptied of their original inhabitants. During this three-year period alone, some 531 Palestinian towns and villages were also simultaneously ethnically cleansed and then later razed by the newly established Israeli state. As Moshe Dayan, a native of the Ukraine, would later boast:

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population" (Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969).

What is perhaps lesser known is that during this same period tens of thousands of books, paintings, musical recordings, furniture, and other artifacts were also looted by the Zionist militias from Palestinian homes, libraries, and government offices. As documented by Benny Brunner and Arjan El Fassed in their film The Great Book Robbery, at least 70,000 Palestinian books were stolen from their owners. As shown in the documentary, this theft was no mere accidental by-product of war; rather, it was a deliberate act with a specific purpose:

“For decades Zionist and Israeli propaganda described the Palestinians as ‘people without culture.’ Thus, the victorious Israeli state took upon itself to civilise the Palestinians who remained within its borders at the end of the 1948 war. They were forbidden to study their own culture or to remember their immediate past; their memory was seen as a dangerous weapon that had to be suppressed and controlled.”

1948, however, would not be the last time that Israeli forces would steal and destroy Palestinian books and other cultural productions. In 1982, during its occupation of Lebanon, Israeli invasion troops would storm the homes, offices, and libraries of Palestinians and walk away with thousands of books, films, and other records documenting Palestinian history. This is a common practice of Israeli occupation forces and continues to this day, most notably in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, which were occupied in 1967 along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai.

The meaning behind this theft is not complicated. Unable to assimilate actual, recorded Palestinian history (which was and remains mostly in Arabic) into its fabricated history, Israel chooses simply to destroy it, to physically remove it from sight, while simultaneously inventing and disseminating a fairy-tale account of Palestine as a virgin “land without people for a people without a land.” Consequently, the destruction of Palestinian villages, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities, the aerial bombing of Palestinian refugee camps, and the looting of Palestinian books all lead to the same intersection: what cannot be absorbed within Zionist mythology must be eradicated.

Palestinian Artifacts: Re-writing History

The Zionist belief that modern European and Russian Jews (and all of worldwide Jewry for that matter) are somehow the direct, lineal descendants of ancient Hebrew-speaking tribes who lived on another continent some 2000 years ago and can thus lay claim to Palestine, its history, and its culture would be outright laughable if the political consequences of this fairy-tale ideology were not so tragic. That this racist belief, propagated by both anti-Semites and Zionists alike, is accepted as self-evident truth and not even worthy of questioning by most Western mainstream media outlets is certainly a testament to decades of Zionist propaganda and to a shameful journalistic laziness and conformity of thought that has now become the norm.

A typical example is this article from the Huffington Post titled “Israel Ancient Jewelry Uncovered in Archeological Dig.” According to the article, “Israeli archaeologists have discovered a rare trove of 3,000-year-old jewelry, including a ring and earrings, hidden in a ceramic jug near the ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon.” Based on the guesses of Israel Finkelstein, who co-directed the dig, “the jewelry likely belonged to a Canaanite family.” That may well have been so, but the unquestioned assumption throughout the piece is that this jewelry is in some way Israeli. (Note, as well, how a biblical tale associated with the ancient Palestinian city of Megiddo is mentioned as if this was of any relevance.)

In 1919, the World Zionist Organisation officially presented a map of its future state of “Israel” at the Paris Peace Conference. This map included not only all of Palestine, but also southern Lebanon, southwestern Syria, including the Golan Heights, significant parts of western Jordan, and parts of Egypt’s Sinai. Let us for argument’s sake say that the WZO’s colonial wish was granted at least in the case of Lebanon. Would that make all the ancient artifacts found in occupied southern Lebanon, “Israeli”? What of Syria’s Golan which remains occupied today; are the artefacts found there today somehow “Israeli”? And what about Egypt’s Sinai, a territory that Israel occupied from 1967 to 1979; were the ancient relics discovered there during the period of occupation “Israeli”? And did they stop becoming “Israeli” after the Zionist state properly returned the stolen land back to Egypt?

Since all of Palestine is as stolen as the once occupied Sinai and the currently occupied Syrian Golan, what exactly is so “Israeli” about this ancient jewelry discussed in the Huffington Post article besides the unsubstantiated claims of its author who completely ignores Palestinian history? The European/Zionist re-writing of ancient Palestinian history is so blatant, so ubiquitous, it is almost invisible. Not only have Zionists re-written Palestinian history, they have also written themselves into it even as they remove indigenous Palestinians both physically and notionally out. Wielding history as a weapon, this type of propaganda utilises the laziest and most common form of censorship, that of simple omission.

This particular form of cultural theft, however, is not limited to Palestine. Israel, against all historical evidence, continues to conflate its racist political ideology, its raison d’être, Zionism - a uniquely European creation - with Judaism, a universal religion with origins in the Arab world. Thus, Zionists justify the theft of Iraqi-Jewish archives, for instance; or they claim that 1000-year-old Jewish documents originally from Afghanistan belong to the Zionist state. The assumption is that, since a document has Hebrew or even Aramaic script written on it, it must somehow belong in “Israel” and not where it was actually found. It never occurs to the author of the Haaretz piece that a 1000-year-old document discovered in Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with a European colonial-settler state established in 1948 on top of Palestine. Or have perhaps Israel’s undeclared borders now stretched to Afghanistan?

Palestinian/Arab Dress

Palestinian women are rightly proud of traditional Arab dress, as any people would be of their creations. These stunningly intricate, handmade embroidered dresses, scarves, and other accessories have deep roots within the Arab world, especially Greater Syria. The skills with which to create them have been passed down from generation to generation and the evidence of their authenticity and artistry is undeniable. So refined is Palestinian dress in particular, that one can identify their place of origin within Palestine from the colours and designs of the embroidery alone.

Historian and scientist Hanan Karaman Munayyer, an expert on Palestinian clothing, traces “the origins of proto-Palestinian attire from the Canaanite period circa 1500 B.C. when Egyptian paintings depicted Canaanites wearing A-shaped garments. The distinctive silhouette is observed in a 1200 B.C. ivory engraving from Megiddo, Palestine, identified as a ‘Syrian tunic’” (Sovereign Threads by Pat McDonnell Twair, PalestineHeritage.org). In short, they are living works of art that carry within their stitches millennia of indigenous cultural memory.

Yet even Palestinian dress has not been immune from shameless Israeli theft and appropriation. Basem Ra’ad, in his superb Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean, writes:

“An Israeli book on embroidery, Arabesque: Decorative Needlework from the Holy Land, starts with "biblical times" and ends with photographs showing Israeli adults and children wearing the embroidered clothing of Palestinian villagers (many from the villages from which Palestinians were forced to flee in 1948). These Israelis have put on an act for the photographs. The book not only takes over a Palestinian art form; it impersonates it. The euphemistic allusion to the "Holy Land" helps to camouflage the real, Palestinian source of this unique form of village art” (128).

As Ra’ad notes throughout, often within Israeli cultural works no mention at all is made of Palestinians thus rendering them invisible. A more recent and equally outrageous form of appropriation was documented in an article from Ma’an News which describes the theft of the Arab kufiya or hattah. Though common throughout the Arab world, the kufiya became a Palestinian symbol of resistance during the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-39 when the majority of Palestinians rose up against the British occupation and their Zionist colonial allies. That Zionists today choose to appropriate this symbol in a pathetic effort to make it their own is yet another example of both an ignorance of Arab history and a complete lack of imagination.

Palestinian/Arab Cuisine

What is more fundamental to any people and its culture than its food? The stealing of Palestinian cuisine by the Zionist state has been just as shameless as its theft of Palestinian land. In fact, since cuisine is so overtly geographically-based, the two are in reality one and the same. Jaffa oranges, olives and olive oil, hummus, tabouleh, arak, falafel, kubbeh and almost every other kind of Arabic food, drink, and ingredient native to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and the rest of the Arab world suddenly becomes “Israeli” within the state’s various media and through its Western advocates without any acknowledgement of its true origins.

Consider, for instance, this article from the Jerusalem Post which states that arak is “indigenous to Israel.” “The largest-selling spirit in Israel may be vodka,” claims the writer, “but the indigenous spirit is arak.” Note, too, how several countries from the region are cited -Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan - but, somehow, Palestine remains beyond the recall of the writer. This is a typical strategy of Zionist cultural appropriation and usurpation; list the surrounding countries and cultures as if you are a part of them, but don’t mention the country you destroyed and whose culture you stole. One must also wonder how a colonial settler state established in 1948 by Europeans can lay claim to an indigenous Arab cuisine which existed for millennia before it ever came into being. Perhaps this is another example of the fabled “miracles of Israel.”

Or take the example of falafel which Israel claims is its “national” dish, an assertion repeated in countless cook books, blogs, and even academic papers. “What distinguishes the case of falafel from those of rice and wine is our access to its historical origins,” writes Yael Raviv. “Falafel was not assimilated into Israeli society by a long, slow, natural process. Rather, its transformation into an icon of Israeli culture was rushed and deliberate. In its urgent search for symbols of unity, the nationalist movement hit upon falafel as a signifier of Israeli pride.” This is a remarkable bit of ahistorical sophistry. How exactly is falafel - which existed long before “Israel” - a “signifier of Israeli pride” unless one is proud of cultural theft?

In a refreshing moment of honesty, Gil Hovav admits: “Of course it’s Arabic. Hummus is Arabic. Falafel, our national dish, our national Israeli dish, is completely Arabic and this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it’s an Arab salad, Palestinian salad. So, we sort of robbed them of everything.” Although it is always appreciated to hear Zionists admit their various thefts, take away the apologetic qualifier “sort of” and we will arrive to a much closer truth.

The usual defence or apologetics, however, is that this is a trivial matter; it is only food after all. Unfortunately, Israeli claims to inventing Palestinian and Arabic cuisine are used for distinctly political purposes - to marginalise, discredit and, ultimately, to dispossess the Palestinian people. Did the Russian-born Golda Meir (originally, Golda Mabovich) invent hummus? Did the Polish native David Ben-Gurion (originally, David Green) create the recipe for tabouleh? Perhaps it was the family of current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (originially, Ben Mileikowsky), who created falafel? As ridiculous as these questions are, this is essentially what Zionists are asking us to believe whenever they refer to Arabic food as “Israeli.”

Palestinian Agriculture and Land

A common Zionist historical fabrication, still disseminated today, is that “Israelis made the [Palestinian] desert bloom.” Palestine, according to this tall tale, was a horrid, barren place until European Jews arrived with their superior technology and know-how and made it flower. It was only then, as the tall tale continues, that those poor Arabs arrived (from other countries, of course) to find work in this new, green, and blooming land. As recently as the 2012 American election campaign, openly anti-Palestinian bigots such as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney would parrot this ahistorical fiction in an attempt to score cheap political points.

Here, however, are some historical facts to counter this racist fairy tale. In 1901, the Jewish National Fund was founded in Basel, Switzerland with the explicit goal of buying land in Palestine for exclusive European Jewish colonisation. By 1948, after nearly half a century, they had succeeded in buying less than 7 percent of Palestinian land, mostly from absentee landlords living outside of Palestine. In other words, the enterprise was a failure; Palestinians understandably would not give up rightful ownership of their land for any price.

Why is this important? When Britain invaded and occupied Palestine from 1917 to 1948, they not only came with their military and typical savagery, but also with their surveyors and scholars whose main job was to produce information on the country they happened to occupy. This information would fill volumes of books sent back for consumption by the British public and in order to justify their government’s imperial projects abroad. One of those volumes is the 1300-page A Survey of Palestine published in December 1945.

Summarised brilliantly by the Lawrence of Cyberia Website, the survey reveals that Palestinians produced the vast majority of Palestine’s agricultural output as late as 1948, including “92 percent of its grain, 86 percent of its grapes, 99 percent of its olives, 77 percent of its vegetables, 95 percent of its melons, 99 percent of its tobacco, and 60 percent of its bananas.” Sami Hadawi in his Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine showed similar results. It simply makes no agricultural sense that Zionist colonists, who were in the minority at the time, were minority land holders, and who had only recently arrived in Palestine, overnight turned a supposed desert into a flower bed.

The reality is that it was Palestinians who made Palestine bloom through centuries of labour and hard work, not recently-arrived foreign colonists from Europe, Russia, and (later) the United States and elsewhere. These are the facts as recorded in 1948 by both indigenous Palestinians and their British occupiers. Those who believe in magic and fairy tales, on the other hand, can always return to the comfort of Zionist myths and Hollywood.

Conclusion: The Rope of a Lie is Short

Books, music, art, cuisine, dress—these are what constitute the essence of a people’s culture and history. Israel’s cultural claims on Palestine are as vacuous as its claims on the land; both have been taken, and are still being taken, by force and fabrication. The Palestinian intellectual Dr. Fayez Sayegh once said, “Israel is, because Palestine has been made not to be.” Sayegh was not only speaking of the land but also of the entirety of the Palestinian nation which, naturally, includes its cultural productions as well. Zionism, like all other European colonial-settler movements, uses cultural and historical theft as key weapons in its war of elimination against the indigenous Palestinians.

Israel’s delusion that Palestinian culture belongs to it is no different from the fantasy that it somehow sits in Europe and not in the heart of the Arab world. The continuing theft of Palestinian culture in particular and of Arab culture in general is a damning reflection of its own artificiality, its poverty of spirit and, indeed, of its very illegitimacy. There is a Palestinian proverb that says, “The rope of a lie is short (قصير الكِذِب حبل)” meaning, a lie will sooner or later be found out. The goal of the Zionist project in Palestine, to erase it from history and take its place using all means possible, has been obvious to Palestinians almost from its inception; it is time for the rest of the world to come to this realisation. For the sake of justice and common decency, it is also long time to give credit where credit is due.

NO HOLDS BARRED: What’s Richard Branson’s problem with Israel?

Clearly such views are not just a moral abomination but repesenta deplorable and permanent stain on the reputation of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Richard Branson. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Richard Branson is the business magnate who heads the venture capital conglomerate Virgin Group, known best for its Virgin Atlantic airlines and Virgin Mobile wireless communications brand. He has been dubbed a master at business and public relations, and has accrued billions through his dealings.

I have met him on a few occasions. Once at Oxford, when he opened a restaurant with my friend, world-renowned chef Raymond Blanc, and again at the World Economic Forum in Davos. On both occasions he was friendly, approachable and very down-to-earth.

But a little known and unfortunate fact about Branson is his strange anti-Israel opinions and activities, that are beneath a man known for his good and kind heart.

In 2007, Branson founded an organization called “The Elders” which was made up of a council of 12 elder statesmen who would serve as “independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights.” One of the top goals and priorities of this organization is to inject itself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and influence its outcome. Branson sits on the The Elders’ advisory council and uses his massive wealth to fund the organization. Unfortunately the elders that Branson selected for his group are a who’s who of some of the most tenacious, anti-Israel public figures in the world today. The Elders’ anti-Israel statements and press releases condemning the Jewish state are a sad testament to this fact.

Topping the Elders’ list is former US president Jimmy Carter, a man dedicated to the disgustingly fraudulent and anti-Semitic proposition that Israel is an apartheid state. Carter’s defamatory fabrications about the Jewish state include not only the lie that Israel is like apartheid South Africa but also that “voices from Jerusalem dominate our media.” Last year he claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t interested in making peace but said of Hamas arch-terrorist Khaled Mashaal, “I don’t believe that he’s a terrorist. He’s strongly in favor of the peace process.” It has been shown that the Carter Center receives tens of millions from countries with appalling human rights records and which are dedicated to Israel’s delegitimization, including Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE. He also received $500,000 from the anti-Semitic, terrorist-supporting Zayed Center, whose efforts he went on to praise the following year.

The list of Carter’s actions and statements against the Jewish state are degrading to the august office of the presidency of the United States, even if they were stated after the fact.

Yet in 2014, Branson named Jimmy Carter one of his “top five most respected people in the world,” and a man “ahead of his time.” At a conference in Egypt, Branson introduced Carter as “perhaps arguably the most remarkable person alive today.” After pressing the audience to give Carter a second round of applause, Branson announced, “I think its fair to say that he’s one of the few people in this world who has stayed faithful to the Palestinians.”

Branson is a brilliant man. Does he really believe that someone who has allowed the Palestinians to continue in their self-defeating terrorist path is loyal to their cause? Surely Branson is aware that the only people dedicated to the Palestinians’ welfare are those who encourage them to democratize, spend money on schools rather than bombs, invest in universities rather than rockets and teach their children to love their own heritage rather than hate the Jews.

Other “elders” in Branson’s organization include the notoriously anti-Israel, anti-Semitic Bishop Desmond Tutu, whom I have also met on several occasions, including at the Oxford Union.

Tutu is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. His bigoted views have surfaced with statements such as, “The Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful,” while accusing Jews of “an arrogance – the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.”

Tutu has stated that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” and has accused the Jewish state of subjecting the Palestinians to “Israeli apartheid.” He believes that the Palestinians are suffering more than the Jews did during the Holocaust, stating that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” for the Jews.

Clearly such views are not just a moral abomination but represent a deplorable and permanent stain on the reputation of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Is this what Branson had in mind when he stated in an interview, “And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost”? I believe in my heart that Branson is a good and charitable man. So why say these things about the Jews? Branson also tapped the former head of the UN, Kofi Annan, the same man who overruled UN general Romeo Dallaire in April 1994 and ordered him not to use UN forces to disarm the Hutus and prevent them from hacking to death 800,000 Tutsis.

Annan in the past declared Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with, and then sat down to smoke expensive cigars with the Butcher of Baghdad. He also declared himself “deeply moved” by the death of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and ordered the UN flag flown at half mast.

Included in Branson’s group is the man Kofi Annan appointed as UN special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. During Brahimi’s assignment he criticized Israel’s violence and suppression of Palestinians and called Israel “the big poison in the region.”

Nice.

Branson, apparently, sees eye to eye with Brahimi.

After his 2009 trip to Israel with the Elders, Branson wrote, “On my return I rang my 92-yearold father and told him of our trip. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘that the Israel politicians seem to like keeping a wound open and festering year after year.’” Now, perhaps his father said this out of ignorance. Perhaps he’s unaware of all the Israeli attempts to make peace with the Palestinians that ended with thousands of Israelis dead in suicide attacks. But then Branson ought to know better than the response he gave his father: “Let’s hope 2009 will be the year that wound is healed.”

Branson’s crack team of peace makers also includes Mary Robinson, the former head of one of the most corrupt anti-Israel organizations on earth, the UN Human Rights Council. During her time there, she presided over the Durban “World Conference Against Racism,” which has gone down in history as one of the vile displays of public anti-Semitic in recent times. Yet she described the conference as “remarkably good, including on the issues of the Middle East.”

During the Gaza conflict of 2014 she and Carter wrote a letter arguing for the recognition and inclusion of Hamas due to the genocidal terrorist group’s “legitimacy as a political actor.” The Elders had earlier that year praised the Hamas-Fatah unity government.

Robinson’s appointment to the Elders council isn’t surprising, seeing as how Branson ignored the fact that Hamas has fired over 14,000 missiles at Israeli towns when he said, “Just watching Israel bombarding Palestine and Palestine sending one or two little rockets over to Israel – it’s just too sad for words.”

Branson also has former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari on board, who has said he calls on the Western world to end the boycott of Hamas.

During Ahtisaari’s time with The Elders, he condemned Israel’s raid on ships to Gaza in a press release that stated, “The Elders described Israel’s attack on the aid shipment and the resulting killings and injuries as completely inexcusable.” The UN itself later exonerated Israel in this matter.

But when your agenda is to harm Israel there’s little need to find supporting facts for your biased claims.

Branson has been a very public figure in the business world. I admire the swashbuckling commercial image he has cultivated. Why does he have to tarnish his image and his brand with these anti-Israel statements and associations? Why pour millions of dollars into activities aimed at harming and weakening the Jewish state? His organization continues to be a force for the defamation of Israel. Carter recently spoke on behalf of The Elders stating, “We have also encouraged Europeans for instance, at least to label products that are made by Israeli people who occupy Palestine and ship their products out of Palestine to be sold in Europe.... [S]o that the buyers can decide whether they want to buy them or not.”

The time has come for Richard Branson to follow his generosity of spirit by disassociating himself with arch-Israel haters, ceasing to fund them, and to begin supporting and standing behind the Middle East’s only democracy. After all, Israel is not just the Jewish state. As a bastion of freedom and human rights in the world’s most tyrannical region, it’s also the great Arab hope that one day Arab countries will copy its example of liberal democracy and human rights.

The author, “America’s rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of 30 books, winner of The London Times Preacher of the Year Competition and recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. He will shortly publish The Israel Warrior’s Handbook.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Luz Bone: The Seed of Resurrection

“Again He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life.’” (Ezekiel 37:1-5)

Resurrection of the dead is a religious tenet that may soon become scientific fact. The question is who will get there first: God or scientists?

Many great rabbis are saying that we are in the final days before the Messiah, and though God has his own sense of time, wearing a wristwatch that slowly ticks off the millenniums, he has been challenged to a deadline when it comes to the resurrection.

Reproductive cloning is the process of making an entire human from previously existing cells. In many countries, human cloning is illegal for ethical and religious reasons, though reproductive cloning of humans is entirely legal under federal law in the US and, at present, unregulated.

However, making the decision to begin (or end) a human life is considered by theologians to be the ultimate hubris, usurping God’s position as master of the universe and creator of man. In many ways, cloning could indeed be defined as scientists in the lab trying to copy God’s work. Cloning, after all, does have its source in Jewish mysticism.

When it comes time to resurrecting the dead in Jewish thought, the Luz bone, a tiny bone most people are unaware exists, is very important. The Luz bone is a miniscule bone from the spine, about the size of a barley grain and almost cubic in shape. According to Jewish tradition, it can never be destroyed and receives nourishment from Melava Malka, the meal eaten on Saturday night after the Sabbath ends.

Since it can never be destroyed, during the resurrection of the dead, the body re-grows from this tiny bone in a manner that is strangely reminiscent of cloning. Belief in the resurrection of the dead is one of the Rambam’s 13 principles of faith, so this little-known bone plays a larger role in the religion than most Jews realize.

The Jewish source for the Luz bone is in Bereishit Rabba (28:3), a collection of homiletical teachings from the third century, which states:

“(Roman Emperor) Hadrian was grinding bones. He asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah: ‘From where does the Holy One, Blessed be He, reconstruct man in the future to come?’ He answered him: ‘From the Luz of the spine.’ Said he: ‘From where do you know this?’. He said: ‘It has come to me (as a tradition), and I will show you.’ They tried to grind it in a mill but it was not ground, they burnt it in fire but it was not consumed, they put it in water but it was not softened, they put it on an anvil and he started to beat it with a hammer but the anvil slipped, the hammer was broken and it remained intact.”

Rabbi isaac Luria Ashkenazi, also referred to as the Ari or Arizal, one of the foremost Kabbalists of all time, lived in Safed in the 16th century. He taught that the Luz bone is located in the place where the knot of the tefillin is placed, where the skull meets the back of the neck. This is generally considered to be the seventh cervical vertebra.

According to tradition, this is the part of God’s neck that Moses saw when he ascended to heaven to receive the Tablets of the Covenant. Other commentators believed that the Luz bone is located at the bottom of the spine, the tailbone, known to modern scientists as the coccyx.

The numerology of the Hebrew term “etzem haLuz” (the Luz bone) is 248, the same as the number of limbs that make up the body, according to rabbinic sources – seeming to indicate that just as a person’s entire physical being can be cloned from just a few cells, a person’s entire spiritual being can be encapsulated in one spiritual act.

In the race to resurrect, science got a late start but it has come far since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996. Humai, a biotech company based in Los Angeles, is a contender, promising to “reinvent the afterlife”. Their first-stage goal is to transplant the brain of a deceased individual into a “bionic body” created with cloning technology. In an interview with Pop-Sci Magazine, Humai CEO, Josh Bocanegra, explained the process:

“Our mission is fairly simple to understand but obviously difficult to execute. We’ll first collect extensive data on our members for years prior to their death via various apps we’re developing. After death we’ll freeze the brain using cryonics technology. When the technology is fully developed we’ll implant the brain into an artificial body. The artificial body functions will be controlled with your thoughts by measuring brain waves. As the brain ages we’ll use nanotechnology to repair and improve cells. Cloning technology is going to help with this too.”

Throwing down the gauntlet in a clear time-bound challenge to the creator, Bocanegra said, “We believe we can resurrect the first human within 30 years.”

Bocanegra’s claims seem too good to be true, and they very well might be. Little has been heard from his company since its inception and technology still has some major hurdles before science can claim to have one up on God. Brains and even entire bodies have been cryogenically preserved, though a resurrection, an essential part of Humai’s process, has yet to be attempted.

Transplanting a brain into a donor body, the next crucial stage in the process, will be attempted for the first time next year by Italian neuroscientist Sergio Canavero, though many are skeptical of his chances of success.

So, which one will come first: Cloning or Luz bone? Either way, sometime in the next 30 years, we will probably get our answer.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/59648/who-will-win-race-resurrection-science-god-jewish-world/#0hxAt5YGOyjMDUr1.99